What is neuroscience?

Hello friends!

This is the 1st Lesson of our Free Online Neuroscience Course. In this Course, we will talk about the main concepts of Neuroscience, but what is more interesting in my opinion will be the texts dedicated to how the brain and the entire Nervous System influence behavior and are, in turn, influenced by the environment. We’ll get there soon.

Shall we start at the beginning then?

Literally, neuroscience is the science that studies the nervous system which, in turn, is made up of the brain and the central and peripheral nervous system. There are several ways to study this system of our body, which is one of the most complex, from the microscopic level to the relationship between body and environment, in observable behaviors such as walking and talking, or in hidden behaviors, such as thinking, imagining, dreaming.

So we have to say that there are neurosciences, in the plural, depending on how the study will be carried out, that is, neuroscience can and should be divided into related areas, complementary to the study, ranging from biochemistry to psychology.

In summary, neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system in a broad way and, therefore, comprises five disciplines:

1) Molecular neuroscience: deals with the function of molecules;

2) Cell neuroscience: studies the constitution and function of cells in the nervous system;

3) Systemic neuroscience: describes and analyzes the regions of the nervous system and is linked to neuroanatomy. In other words, he divides the nervous system into parts and names these parts and seeks to understand their functions;

4) Behavioral neuroscience: directly linked to psychology, especially behavioral psychology. It relates the study of the organism with the environment, focusing its study on internal behaviors such as thoughts, emotions and visible behaviors such as speech, gestures and other actions in general.

5) Cognitive neuroscience: focuses its study on even more complex behaviors such as memory, learning, in short, the cognitive capacity of a given person at a given time.

As we can see, especially for disciplines 4 and 5, the limits are tenuous, that is, they have lines of contact and, in many studies, knowledge from more than one discipline is used, according to the hypotheses, theses and methodologies. To better understand what neuroscience is, we can imagine a camera that, with its zoom, gets closer and closer, starting from the body as a whole and its interaction with its surroundings, entering the skin and visualizing the parts of the nervous system, arriving at the cellular level of this system, such as neurons, and going even closer, and with more zoom, to the molecules that make up the different types of nerve cells.

Thus, insofar as we need to use the knowledge of each of these disciplines, we always speak of multidisciplinarity when we are going to study neurosciences. There are many disciplines, therefore, multi-disciplinary.

Big questions in neuroscience

We know that the development of neurosciences is very recent. In another Lesson, we will talk about history. But in order to introduce ourselves in the area, we can describe two major issues that were present from the beginning and that, to a certain extent, are still present today.

The first issue that brought huge debates among specialists was between the part and the whole. In technical terms, we say globalists and localizationists. Although the two terms seem complicated, it’s simple to understand.

Imagine the brain in all its complexity. Let’s say we want to study speech. Where does speech take place in the brain? Is it located in a specific region or does speech happen using the brain as a whole?

Some researchers argued that speech should take place in just one place (localizationists – they defended the location of the function), while other researchers maintained the idea that speech took place in different regions of the brain and, being a highly complex behavior, it should make use of the brain as a whole, globally (globalists).

Evidently, I chose the speech example. But the discussion involved and involves all other functions.

The second issue consisted of the doubt as to whether the brain and the nervous system as a whole were just a function of the spirit (spiritualists) or not. Everything that the ancients attributed to the spirit, such as language, dreams, emotions, was just an attribution of matter (materialists). This second question is also easy to understand, if we think about the idea, present in all religions, that we have two or more “bodies”.

For example, many religious Christians speak of body, soul and spirit (or body and soul). Although the soul and spirit are invisible, we must assign a special substance or kind of matter, different from visible matter, but still a matter, a body, or a form. Therefore, when religious people describe the human being with 3 bodies (or 2 in the dualistic and non-tripartite view), they are talking about substances other than the body.

In the East, several religions still think of more bodies, as is the case with Theosophy, which, although Western, has influences from Hinduism and Buddhism. Theosophy therefore describes 7 bodies: 1) Sthula sharira – The physical body, 2) Prâna – The vital body; 3) Linga sharira – The etheric double, 4) the astral body; Kâma rupa – The desire body or emotional body, 5) Manas – Our Human Soul, or Divine Mind; 6) Budhi – Our Divine Soul; 7) Atman – The ray of the Absolute, our Divine Essence.

Regardless of the number of “bodies”, what I want to say is that in spirituality it is always believed that the physical body, observable and visible, is just a vehicle, along with other realities, more subtle or elevated. In summary, this is the spiritualists’ argument: the body receives messages from the soul and spirit and is thus controlled by them.

The materialist argument, which, by the way, dominates academic research in the current world, argues that all that exists is the body. The body that we can see with the naked eye and the body that we can see under the microscope and that we can analyze in laboratory tests, at the cellular and molecular levels. With this, it is not the spirit that sends a message for the body to act or speak, but it is the body itself, through neurons, neurotransmitters, electrical impulses, hormones, etc., that activates all our behaviors.

Thus, these two big questions are still present:

Globalists vs Localizationists

Spiritualists X Materialists

Although the discussion still remains, currently, materialists and localizationists are – let’s say – winning the dispute, for presenting the most convincing arguments within the mode of science as we know it.

In the next Lesson, we will talk more about the History of Neuroscience.

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